Mission Scientifique au Mexique et dans l'Amérique Centrale: Études sur les Poissons

Pp. 200, 17 full page plates - 15 are beautiful chromolithograph plates finished by hand and heightened with gum-arabic by Bocourt and lithographed by Mesnel (each plate has an accompanying page of descriptive text). Quarter red morocco with five raised bands, gilt-lettered on the spine over French marbled boards with matching French marbled endpapers (original gray printed wrappers are bound in place), folio (14.25 x 11 inches). This work was issued in parts from 1874 to 1915. Pages 1-40 with accompanying plates were released in 1874, pp. 41-120 with plates in 1878 and pp. 121-200 with plates in 1883. In 1915 Valliant died without completing the work. The final, unfinished part (not offered here) was then issued separately along with the final 3 plain lithographic plates. This work documents the exotic tropical fish of coastal and inland southern Mexico and Central America. This work is fourth volume of a 13-volume work of the “Mission Scientifique au Mexique et dans l'Amérique Centrale,” which was the French competitor to the British “Biologia Centrali-Americana” which also documented the plant and animal life of Central America. This fourth volume is the complete work on the fishes.